I love embellishing. Love Love Love. The problem? On two-page layouts, there tends to be a lot of photos, so how do you do it without making the spread look too full? Here's some ways I do this on a two-page layout.

1. Visual triangle

The visual triangle is a classic, I know, but I admit, I love it. Here I used the speech bubbles to create a visual triangle that led the eye across the page, and gave some humorous side comments to the main journaling as well.

Diane Payne did a great job of creating a visual triangle with her stars, which were perfectly thematic as well!

2. Balance across the spread.

I learned this from Stacy Julian in her book, The Big Picture. She described a basic embellishment principle that has served me well: what you do on one side of the page, you should do on the other. I would add, with some asymmetry. On the left I added an embellishment cluster, and on the right I made the same cluster but smaller.

And here Diane Payne did the same thing: punched circles and dots on the less, the same but fewer on the right.

3. Go with very little embellishment.

You can see on some previous pages that I love embellishments; in comparison, on this page I haven't included many embellishments. I'm not crazy enough to go without--not me! Still, this page is mainly photos and strips of patterned paper, plus a stitched circle around the main subject in the big photo.

Christa Paustenbaugh was much more austere than I: just the pinked circle next to the main photo plus some tags and a button. Note the visual triangle!

This page by Marnie Flores is a perfect example of how stunning a page can be with few embellishments. Look at how beautifully the attention is drawn to the photos! Love the journaling on the photo.

And now, for the giveaway!

This week we are excited to have help for three of you!! First, one of you will receive a free copy of the Danielle Flanders' eBook from Ella Publishing, Embellishing Handbook.

Here is a little bit about Danielle's book.

When it comes to embellishing, how do you know what should go where? And how do you know when enough is enough? Get help from Danielle Flanders' timeless tips for accenting and adorning your scrapbook layouts and cards. In this eBook, you'll learn Danielle's top five strategies for WHY we embellish:● to establish a focal point● to set a mood● to reinforce a style● to add character and creativity● to incorporate texture

You'll also delve into her top five strategies for HOW to embellish more effectively:● vary scale● use repetition● choose odd numbers● create accent clusters● combine patternsEach embellishing secret is illustrated by two different projects—a beautiful layout and must-try card idea, all designed by Danielle herself. Get ready to embellish like a pro!

This ebook will certainly contain some strategies for finding places to embellish on your two page layouts!!

Next, another lucky reader will take home a free copy of May Flaum's new eBook from Ella Publishing, Fashionable Fast.

Here is a little bit about May's book.

You've heard of being fashionably late, but what about being fashionably FAST? Join the speediest scrapbooker on the block, May Flaum, as she joins forces with five of the fastest (and most fabulous) scrapbookers she knows in Fashionably Fast: 10 strategies for stylish, speedy scrapbook pages. This two-time author and popular instructor has compiled her 10 best time-saving strategies, which are illustrated by 20 gorgeous scrapbook pages and accompanied with 30 minutes of exclusive video instruction! See how easy it can be to accelerate your scrapbooking process without sacrificing artistry.

Lisa Day is back with another round of 28 sketches! This time, in addition to receiving 28 daily sketches accompanied by layouts from Lisa, you will also receive exclusive layouts and cards from seven fabulous guest stars! This means that you will
receive 28 brand new sketches and 56 exclusive projects to inspire you to
create beautiful layouts and cards quickly.

Another exciting new addition is that in addition to the 12" x 12" daily sketch, you
will see the sketch adapted to a double page layout and an 8 1/2" x 11" sketch. All this means MORE inspiration and MORE ideas of how to make a sketch work for you!

We hope these books and this class help your layouts come together more quickly and more beautifully. If you would like to be considered for our giveaway, please leave us a comment telling us more about your use of two page layouts. Do you love them? use them? Exclusively or never? Do you struggle with them? And if so, what part? We love gaining insight into your struggles so that we can help you resolve your issues!

Comments will remain open throughout the evening. Three lucky numbers will be selected at random and posted tomorrow morning. Please remember it is your responsibility to check back and to claim your lucky number before midnight Saturday.

Thanks again for coming! Tomorrow we'll share the lucky number and some journaling tips.

April 10, 2013

Jennifer Larson again. I'm so glad you're here sharing more about scrapbooking two-page layouts! Today I'll write about the number of photos I use on a two page layout.

Total honesty: I've never scrapped a two-page layout with fewer than 3 photos. Maybe I did one with two photos once that I can't remember, but one or zero photos? Never. Still, one can scrap a variety of photo amounts with two pages, though the size lends itself nicely to scrapping a lot. Here's some examples of how I've scrapped different amounts of photos.

1. 0-4 photos

Like I said, I tend to scrap at least 3 photos on a two page layout. This one I used a one-page sketch from Studio Calico.To make it two pages, I looked at the middle of the sketch and sort of stretched it on either side. I hope that makes sense. Grouping the photos together made them look more substantial on the wide 12x24 spread.

More common for me: I stretch the photos out in a line. Here I made use of Pink Paislee's darlng photo frames to house my small photos and make them more weighty on the page.

This darling layout by Christa Paustenbaugh uses three photos on a two page spread. I love how the title goes across the white space on the starring photo! Plus, check out the banner of fun stuff along the side of the starring photo. So much fun.

2. 5-7 photos

This too is more common for me. Like I said before, I love lines stretched across two pages. I've heard once that's a good way to unify two pages, with something stretching across the span. Here I used paper and photos. Still lots of white space.

Another winter layout (Sorry! Snowing here today in Minnesota), this one by Diane Payne. I love so much about the page: the colors (not typical winter), the one big photo framed by smaller detail shots, the die cut paper bookending each side. So many design ideas!

3. 8-10 photos

A lot of photos, but doable with some breathing room. Since we went to Space Aliens restaurant for my son's birthday, I followed a space theme, making my photo mat planets and orbits.

And here's another page by Diane Payne, this time with 8 photos. I love how they are housed on polaroid frames, taped down by washi.

4. 11+ photos.

Otherwise known as a boatload, this is an amount I do rarely, but it's not too difficult. I trim the photos until they all fit across one block, filling in empty space with patterned paper and embellishments. I think there are about 23 photos on this layout. It leaves not much white space, but there is room for small embellishment clusters and a dramatic title.

Another page full of photos, and as a mother of boys, this one by Diane make me smile! I love how clean the page looks with so many photos stretched on the banner, and the pairing of the old and young photos on the bottom is terrific. Great ideas for scrapping school photos.

So glad again you could come back and visit! Tomorrow is a special day: I'll talk about embellishing, which I love!

April 09, 2013

Hello, Jennifer Larson again, sharing more about creating two-page layouts. Today I'll write about how I go about selecting photos to scrap and deciding how to size them.

First, photo selection: I keep a list of page ideas to scrap in my journal, but when I edit photos, I also figure out which pages I want to do. Based on the number of photos, I know if it will probably be a one or two-page layout. It's pretty simple: more photos or more big photos (I swear that's grammatical), I will do a two-page layout. Fewer photos or smaller photos means a one-pager.

In general, I look to see if any photos are "lead actors." Those I size bigger--4x6, 5x7, or larger. These photos will be the star on the page and should be bigger.

If the photos are "supporting actors"--providing detail and color but maybe supporting the story rather than being the star--those I print smaller: 2.5 square, 3 square, more rarely 4 square, or wallet sized. (NOTE: I don't print at home. I send them to a local developer online.) Sometimes a story might be all "supporting actors," sort of like the cast of Friends. It's the ensemble that's important in that case, not one photo above others, so those I print all the same size.

Next, more specifics about photo size. There are basically 4 types of photo sizes I use on a two-page layout:

1. A BIG photo with several smaller ones.

My local developer doesn't print 12x12 or 8.5x11 photos, so I can't do a photo on the whole page unless I send away for the photos to be mailed to me. Then I have to wait, and I hate waiting to scrap, so I rarely do that. My local developer DOES print 8x12, which I love. It doesn't fit the whole page, leaving some room for paper strips and embellishments, like on the page above, Around Town. I mostly added smaller photos plus one normal sized photo to complete this photo record of the places I go in my town.

On this page, I did something similar, this time with a people photo. I find this photo of my husband and son walking in the woods evocative, so I loved enlarging it to epitomize the lovely scene. (I'm pretty sure this is a Donna Januzzi sketch.)

2. Several 4x6 photos

I used pure 4x6 photos on this page about my beloved scrapping group, the Scrappin' J's, because to crop the photos would be to leave out details from our scrap retreats and shopping trips. It is harder to fit a bunch of 4x6 photos on a two-page spread, so when I want this to happen, I follow a hint I got from Angie Lucas at Simple Scrapbook years ago when I found the online scrapbooking community: I start at the middle, placing the photos there, and working outward until all the photos fit well and look good.

3. Tiny photos

This is an example of a page filled with supporting actors but no star. I didn't want to highlight one photo or one moment, so instead I tried to show the process where I documented my vacation via Instagram. To do so, I printed them all 2.5 square. (NOTE: I am not a Photoshop Elements expert, but I learned to make a 4x6 print that housed smaller prints by following this tutorial by Cathy Zielske. It's for a multi photo grid, but the concepts apply to fewer photos on a 4x6 print.)

4. Cropped 4x6 photos

(Please ignore the bent page; I have no clue how that happened!) Although a lot of time I plan on making a two-page layout when I'm editing photos, sometimes I print them and then decide on design later. That's the case for this page: I'd printed the photos then decided to use a sketch by Allison Davis. So I did what scrappers have done for years: trimmed the photos to fit the design, keeping the best photos the largest. (NOTE: The photo of my husband and me I took using the classic extend-an-arm technique. It's served me well for getting photos of me and my guy.)

Thanks again for sharing my process for selecting and sizing photos! Come back tomorrow when I talk about the number of photos I use.

April 08, 2013

Hello! Jennifer Larson here, sharing some of my favorite pages to make: two-page layouts. I make one page layouts, sure, but since I am a mostly sequential scrapper, I record a lot of events, and those pages always seem to have a lot of photos, which makes scrapping two pages easier for me.

Here's what I'll be sharing with you this week:

Day 1 (that's today!): Two-page layout size

Day 2: Photo selection and size

Day 3: Number of photos

Day 4: Embellishments

Day 5: Journaling

On to today's topic...

Page Size

1. 12x12 spread

I have always been a 12x12 scrapper, so these are the two-page layouts I make the most. It's the size I did for this month's gallery page, Everyone's Favorite Meal. Advantages: you can fit a lot of photos, journaling, and product without it looking too squooshed.

2. 8.5x11 spread

I do this less often, selecting it when the photos I have would look cramped on one page (either 8.5x11 or 12x12) but would like like they were swimming swimming in a vast ocean on a 12x12 spread. I used this size on the above layout, Future Scientist. I had three 4x6 photos I trimmed a bit of their backgrounds, and when I tried making this into a 12x12 spead, there was just too much open space. If one can feel agoraphobic about a layout, that was me. When I trimmed the papers down to 8.5x11, though, it all looked Just Right.

3. 12x18

I got the idea for doing this type of two-page layout from write. click. scrapbook., I believe from Jody Dent-Pruks? (Loyal readers, correct me if I'm wrong and you remember who it was!). My albums are American Crafts 3-ring binders, which mean I can fit all sorts of pages in them. Why not put a 12x12 page next to a 6x12 page? I use this spread rarely, but it's good when my photos are too tall for 8.5x11 but too narrow for 12x12, like I did on this page, Lego Club. I used basically two horizontal stacks of 4x6 collage photos across the pages, then added only one 4x6 vertical collage to the left, the perfect amount and size for a 12x18 spread.

4. 8x8 spread

This is my least used two-page layout. With 8x8, I've discovered I need to have only small photos (wallet size, for example) if I want several photos on the page, and since I tend to use a lot of photos on most of my pages, I tend not to gravitate toward this size. Still, There's something sweet and intimate about this size. It's like a page in miniature! This layout, Family Outings, I made for a Big Picture Classes class with Lisa Day a couple years ago called, This is Me. It was terrific, and I was assigned to use an 8x8 sized album, so I got some practice making 8x8 spreads.

Thanks for reading my first day of two-page layouts! Please share in the comments which size of two-page spreads you tend to use, especially if there's a size I haven't mentioned!

April 07, 2013

April 06, 2013

Maybe writing a post that starts with running on a scrapbooking site is a strange thing. Stick with me, though, because I’ll bring them together! I came across something in my new copy of Runner’s World magazine that struck me about scrapbooking. The editor was writing about George Sheehan, who was a doctor, a runner, and a writer. "To me," David Willey (the current RW editor) writes, Sheehan "personified the idea that running and writing have something in common. Something approaching soul."

This idea stayed with me for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I (although famous neither for my running nor my writing) totally get what he means: partly I run because I like writing about running, and they each make the other better.

The same thing goes for scrapbooking. It is the space where art (photography and embellishments) and writing have something in common, and they each make the other better. If we just had words, we’d only have a journal; if we just had art we’d only have something pretty. But when we put them together: well. Now we have soul.

I kept this idea in mind when I was working on my layout for the gallery this month (you can see it here). It’s about how one of the things that makes it feel like spring to me is our tradition of watching for the little crocuses in my front flowerbeds to bloom. We watch & wait & anticipate, and on the day they finally bloom it’s like a sigh of relief: spring’s coming!

The idea for the photos came from Lisa’s Click. post in March. I mean—part of the tradition is taking pictures when they bloom, but I realized I hadn’t taken any pictures of them yet this year. So I got some, and then I wrote what I felt, and then a few weeks later I made the layout. That process—that, to me, is where the soul part comes in. I’d taken some photos before. I’d not ever written down the story. When I did both I made something that has a stronger impact than the two would separately.

Which is why, in my mind, scrapbooking wouldn’t be as cool without the words.

After I made my gallery layout, I started paying attention. What spring traditions had I not told the story of? I made a list of the small and simple ways I celebrate spring:

1. A strawberry themed dessert or two. Or five.2. New sandals. (This stems from my mom’s tradition of putting sandals in our Easter baskets.)3. Making sure I wear something pastel on the first day of spring.4. Sitting on my front porch steps when both sides are surrounded by blooming hyacinths. Is there anything sweeter than that smell? Maybe only lilacs!5. Watching the kids in our neighborhood gather again at our old apple tree.

I have pictures for some of those stories—but I’ve never written them down. So I picked one, wrote the story, found some photos, and made a layout:

Paula did, too:

And that’s my challenge to you on this gorgeous April morning! Make a list of the small, simple things you do to celebrate spring (or fall if you’re on the other side of the world). Pick one and write the story. Look for some pictures that go along with the story, or watch for the chance to take some this spring. Find your soul in the process!

April 05, 2013

Does the change in seasons make you want to spruce things up a bit? When thinking about this week of spring flings, I was stumped for our last day together. Our own Celeste came up with a brilliant idea: spring cleaning!

If you are a bit like me, you love to buy scrapbook supplies. But sometimes you buy them without a project or page in mind. You just buy that paper or embellishment because it is so fabulous! But then it sits in your stash for a long time, just waiting. The time has come to clean out your stash and use it or lose it!

Here's the challenge: take some of the oldest supplies you own and use them up! I put out a call for volunteers, and Francine answered. She found a kit from 2011 and some inks. Here is what she came up with:

Love it!

I also dove into my supplies and found some really cute paper from Cosmo Cricket from a few years ago...like 2008! I decided to use it on this page, about my two boys:

Now it's your turn. Clean out your supplies and make room for something new! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Kelly

p.s. If you have supplies you don't think you will ever use, think about donating them to a school or senior center. I'm sure there are plenty of people who could use them!

April 04, 2013

Happy Thursday, everyone! I'm back with a few more spring flings for you. Let's talk trends! I love magazines and catalogs. So fun to see what is fresh and new in fashion and home decor each season.

Here are a few trends for spring that make me happy: I've been seeing a lot of
stripes (think nautical, with a twist, like colors or size of stripe), bold colors but not necessarily
neon (think a nice bright aqua and deep pink), big patterns (chevron is still popular, but also a lot of
mediterranean influenced patterns on rugs and textiles), ombre and ikat
(what fun words to say!), soft florals and pretty embroidered lace (a
modern twist on eyelet). The good news is that a lot of these are easily applied to scrapbook pages and projects. Here's what I've been doing with some of these:

Chevron patterns. I pinned a tutorial from Studio Calico awhile ago that showed how to make chevron patterns with 1 1/2 inch squares of patterned paper. I finally gave it a go on this Christmas layout. It was super fun! Simply cut 1 1/2 inch squares in half on the diagonal to make diamonds, and then alternate them on top of each other to make a chevron.

Grey and yellow. I saw this a lot in fashion last fall, and carried into winter and spring. I love how the right shade of yellow makes a black and white photo pop. And I can't resist yellow-glittery chipboard letters.

Aren't those photos great? They are of my parents, before they were my parents. They were so young!

Pattern Mixing. I'm not so bold at this with my clothes (I'm always afraid of doing it wrong!), but when I saw these cards from Basic Grey, I had to buy them.

Then I had to do something with them, so I created a mini with some paper scraps I had on my table. It's about 3 x 5, and I used old book pages for the pages. Inside, I included some random photos that I had in my files, the ones I really like for one reason or another, but that aren't really the type to use on a big page. I'm thinking of this as an album where every photo proves something, like, "This photo proves that Luke has always loved dogs," on a page with a photo of Luke as a baby petting my sister's dog. Simple, but fun to look through. And I can mix and match to my heart's content!

Did you notice stripes, polka dots, grid, and color-blocking on the cover? Somehow it all works together. Here is one of the inside pages:

Stripes, Florals, Birds. I ordered an assortment of washi tape from a deal website a few weeks ago and couldn't even remember what I ordered until it arrived in the mail. What a pleasant surprise! I love every single pattern, and have been trying them out on all kinds of projects. Not only is it fun to hang up kids' artwork with (so much prettier than masking tape!), but it is fun to use on projects and pages.

Here are a few cards I made with my new tape and a few embellishments:

I've also been experimenting with ombre designs as backgrounds for photos on a page, and I want to make some pages with a big stamped background. But there are only so many hours in a day! Go have some fun with something new for spring. And then come back tomorrow when I do some SPRING CLEANING!

April 03, 2013

Hello again, friends! Happy Wednesday! Yesterday I was outside, taking a few spring photos. I love discovering the tiny green plants that are just peeking through the dirt. Here's what I found:

Carrots I planted last fall are sprouting! Daffodils have bloomed! Tiny crocuses are appearing!

What does this have to do with scrapbooking? Well, today's focus is spring color. How do you take the colors around you and use them as inspiration in your scrapbooking? Do you need a shot of color inspiration to get you springing into action?

Today is the day to embrace color, or at least welcome a bit of it into your scrap style. Spring is all about green. Emerald green. In fact, Pantone, the experts on color, have named it the Color of 2013. This is what they have to say about it: Emerald is "Lively. Radiant. Lush… A color of elegance and beauty that enhances our sense of well-being, balance and harmony." Sounds good to me! If you visit the Pantone website you will find all kind of color inspiration.

Emerald green, or versions of green, are appearing everywhere. Housewares, fashion, and even makeup has all gone green. I just bought a green sweater, and some green jeans. I don't think I will wear them together, however. A little green can go a long way to livening things up. I've always had a fondness for green, and gathered a few of my favorite green products from my stash:

And here are a few layouts featuring green, just for fun:

This is a layout I made a long time ago because I loved this green baby outfit.

I also had this layout in an album. One morning all my kids showed up at the breakfast table in green pajamas. So cute!

This layout is a bit busy, but I love the green letters and the green paper with bunnies. I still have a bit of that paper and I'm planning to use it on a layout about this year's Easter party!

How will you use green? I promise that if you do, it will put some "spring" in your step! See you tomorrow for more spring fun,